ABOUT THE HALL AND GARDENS

The Hall's origins

The Hall and Gardens we see today are mainly the product of developments in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
This was the time when the Spencers, and their successors the Spencer-Stanhopes, came into wealth and influence.

Before then, the Hall probably started as an Anglo-Saxon farmstead, prior to the Norman Conquest, a farmstead which stood within a well wooded landscape. The first record we have,
of 1344, mentions ‘Cannongreve’, a nearby coppice wood providing fuel for iron smelting.

Forty years later, we find Cannon Hall in the hands of the Bosvilles, a family with land holdings all over South Yorkshire. About this time, their ownership was stained by a horrific
murder at the Hall, thought to be instigated by the family themselves. By the middle of the 17th century, the Hall had passed through several owners and tenants and had enlarged its
land holdings. By 1660, Margaret Hartley had inherited it from her father and sold it to John Spencer, her new step-father, an incomer from Montgomeryshire in the Welsh Borders.

Growing Power and Influence

John Spencer and his descendants became the leading forces in the local iron smelting industry, heading a consortium of iron masters which generated much affluence,
power and influence. On the back of this new wealth and status, the Hall was rebuilt around 1698. This forms the central core of the existing Hall.

By the mid 18th century, the Spencers had largely divested themselves of their iron interests and had become to all intents leisured landed gentry. The current owner, John Spencer,
then decided to create a hall and park in a manner befitting their enlarged landed status. Wings were added to the Hall and the landscaped deer park created.
The Hall’s next big project was additional storeys to its two wings in the 1790s. This was under the stewardship of Walter Spencer-Stanhope, one of the most enlightened of the Spencer-Stanhope
family tree. Having sired fifteen children, it is no surprise that he felt he needed the extra room!

Cannon Hall Park and Features

In the 1760s, under John Spencer, the existing park was developed by Richard Woods of Chertsey, in Surrey. It incorporated all the ‘must-have’ features for an
18th century ‘polite landscape’. These features are still with us today. A walk round the park will reveal a landscaped vista with lakes and planned tree plantings.
There are walls and a ha-ha to contain the deer. Even the road was diverted to ensure privacy!

Two walled gardens were incorporated, the one nearest the Hall for fruit and flowers with an attached set of farm buildings. This garden still reflects its history,
having a renowned pear tree collection and the Cannon Hall Muscat, reputedly brought back from Greece by John Spencer-Stanhope some two hundred years ago. Adjoining the walled garden
is another ‘must-have’ feature, the pinery where you could grow your own pineapples to impress your guests.

Although the 1760s developments created the skeleton of the park, subsequent owners have also left their mark. The deer shelter was built in the early 1800s,
the greenhouses in the walled garden in the 1900s and a most striking feature, ‘Fairy Land’ was developed in the 1870s from the pleasure gardens, using pillars and arches from
local restored churches to create a gothic effect.

All these features can be seen and enjoyed by taking a gentle stroll around the park and popping into the Hall Museum where the downstairs rooms show life in the Hall in its Georgian heyday.

The Museum

Set in its grounds, the Hall now houses a museum which is run by Barnsley Corporation. The Corporation
bought the Hall and Grounds from the Spencer-Stanhopes in 1951 and opened it as a museum six years later.

The ground floor is largely dedicated to re-creating the rooms as they were in the Hall’s heyday in the
18th century. The library, drawing room and dining room are displayed with period furnishings, and give us the feeling of life at the
Hall at that time. The adjoining ballroom was built in the 1890s, in mock-Jacobean style, with oak panelling and a minstrel gallery.

Below stairs, the kitchens recreate life for the Hall servants in Victorian times, an experience given to local school children as part of the Hall’s educational programme.

Key Collections

From being empty in the 1950s, Barnsley Corporation has steadily built up collections in decorative metalwork, glass and ceramics. Its most prominent collection is of
Moorcroft pottery which was mainly amassed in the 1980s. A large exhibition of Moorcroft pottery and its manufacture is a key feature of the Museum’s ground floor display.

The Harvey Collection, donated to the Hall in 2003, forms the core of the Museum’s fine collection of paintings which includes a Canaletto, a constable and many fine Dutch and Flemish
works of the 17th and 18th centuries. Also in the collection, including a feature of the Ballroom fireplace, are works by John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope, a minor Pre-Raphaelite artist and
member of the family.